Author Les Leopold has given up on government regulation of big banks. It no longer makes sense for “$100,000 a year civil servants” to try to keep watch over “$100 million dollar a year bankers” who can afford an “army of financial engineers to outmaneuver the public regulators.”
Instead, it’s time to just nationalize America’s largest financial institutions, says Leopold, and run them like public utilities or non-profit credit unions. Bank employees can then become civil servants, ending “the ridiculous wage distortions” currently in existence. “Wall Street speculators should not earn one hundred times more than neurosurgeons,” he writes.
Critics might argue that such a plan amounts to socialism. Leopold counters: “We’ve already established socialism for Wall Street’s wealthy. We’ve allowed them to profit wildly from their fantasy finance bubble. We bailed them out when it burst. And after we emptied the treasury for their rescue, they are profiting wildly again. Is that capitalism?”
-Noel Brinkerhoff